British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) does not want a new Cold War with China.
“When it comes to China, I don’t think anybody around the table wants to descend into a new Cold War with China,” he said upon arrival at the NATO summit in Brussels.
“But I think people see challenges, they see things that we have to manage together, but they also see opportunities.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also said on Monday there is no new Cold War with China but the Western allies will have to adapt to the challenge of Beijing’s rise.
“We’re not entering a new Cold War and China is not our adversary, not our enemy,” Stoltenberg told reporters at the NATO leaders’ summit, a day after a summit of the Group of Seven (G7) where its leaders were wary of adopting confrontational rhetoric against China.
However, Beijing has previously slammed the group of seven as outdated, saying “the days when global decisions were dictated by a small group of countries are long gone”.
The Chinese Embassy in the United Kingdom lodged a strong protest on Monday after the G7 statement mentioning Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Taiwan and called on the member states to stop interfering in China’s internal affairs. The diplomats stressed the G7 nations’ focus on Xinjiang is purely political manipulation, noting that China must not be slandered and its interests must not be violated.
